


easy livin'

by sarcasticfishes



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series), Fallout 4, Watcher Entertainment RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Fallout-Typical Violence, M/M, Post-Nuclear War, Sharing a Bed, Slice of Life, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:26:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28458987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarcasticfishes/pseuds/sarcasticfishes
Summary: Shane has always fallen easy. He’s had a crush on every single one of his friends and can’t help that he really sees the good in people. And he certainly can’t help that Ryan, even at his worst, is so incredibly beautiful.--The Wasteland - and Ryan - through Shane's eyes.
Relationships: Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej
Comments: 21
Kudos: 70





	easy livin'

**Author's Note:**

> I've been playing a lot of Fallout lately, and I'm gay and I yearn. Hence: an incredibly niche and indulgent fic. 
> 
> This AU is specifically set in the world-space of Fallout 4, the Commonwealth, Boston etc. For those of you familiar with the game I imagine the trading post/shack in the area of the County Crossing settlement.
> 
> Title is a song by Billie Holiday.

Something happens when you spend six weeks in the wasteland with a stranger.

.

Shane’s staring down the barrel of a .44 revolver, his hands raised.

“It’s ok, man,” he says, gently. “I’m not here for a fight.”

“I don’t trust that,” the guy says. He’s not wearing much in the realm of armor, but then again neither is Shane. The guy looks sturdy though — a little hungry, maybe, but strong.

“I’m unarmed,” Shane says. “I think you could take me.”

“You’re tall but you don’t have much meat on your bones,” the guy agrees.

“The thighs are pretty meaty,” Shane says, in an effort to lighten the mood, “You know what they say about those Fancy Lads Snack Cakes. A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.”

“I—” the guy lowers his gun slightly, and the relief Shane feels is _immense_. “I’ve never heard anyone say that, ever.”

“Well, then my friends lied to me,” Shane admits, and the guy snorts out a little laugh.

“Friends. Explains how you’ve made it so long out here unarmed.”

“We got separated in the last rad storm,” Shane admits. One minute they’d been running through the downpour looking for shelter, the next they were gone, and he was alone. He hasn’t seen them in days. “I’m just trying to hook up with them again if I can. You heard about Diamond City?”

The guy lowers his gun entirely, surprise clear on his face. “In Boston? Yeah, I heard of it.”

.

From the sounds of it, Ryan has been on his own for quite a while. He’s quiet until Shane gets him in the right mood, usually after they’ve eaten, and then it’s hard to shut him up.

For six weeks of travel, it’s pretty uneventful. They walk together, they fight together, they hunt together. Ryan’s pretty handy with a baseball bat and a tire iron, and Shane gets to keep the .44 on his hip for emergencies — it’s best not to draw attention with the sound of gunfire.

Early on, outside of Albany, Ryan asks “Where did you start off from anyway?”

Shane says, “Dirt Haven,” and following Ryan’s blank look adds, “Chicago Ruins?”

Ryan shakes his head. “Never heard of it, sorry.”

“That’s okay,” Shane sighs. “I’m not gonna be heading back that way any time soon.”

Ryan doesn’t talk a lot about where he’s been, just says “out west,” when Shane asks where he’s from. Shane doesn’t know a lot about what’s out west, he’s only heard whispers about the New California Republic, a handful of settlement or city names. He doesn’t know Ryan all that well, or his limits, so he’s not going to push if Ryan doesn’t want to talk.

.

Ryan’s a little bit of a hoarder, Shane notices. His backpack is always full of trinkets he finds on his travels, things he likes to tinker with. Occasionally, they’ll bump into a trader with a pack brahmin, and then part ways with lighter packs and considerably more caps than they’d started with.

They find an untouched diner outside of Springfield, and Shane gets excited about the prospect of canned goods. When they get inside, Ryan’s eyes light up in a different way.

Shane says, “You can’t bring _both_ those hotplates with you.”

Ryan says, “Watch me.”

.

Shane has always fallen easy. He’s had a crush on every single one of his friends — some infatuations more fruitful than others — and can’t help that he really sees the good in people. And he certainly can’t help that Ryan, even at his worst, is so incredibly beautiful. 

By week four, he’s watching Ryan pop a Rad-X and wade into a creek. They’ve found a quiet, overgrown nook to spend the night in, right by the bank of the small river. Not a mirelurk in sight. It’s been hot enough now for several days that the water level is low and the ground is dry; they’re both covered in a thick layer of dust and grime.

Ryan washes in the river, and Shane is frankly terrible at keeping watch; hard to keep his eyes off of Ryan like this, waist-deep in the water, thoroughly rubbing himself down with a bar of soap they’d found in an old laundromat. They’ve been eating well — Ryan says it’s easier to hunt now that there’s two of them — so he’s carrying a little more weight than before. Now, seeing him naked, it’s clear that their partnership has been good to Ryan’s body; Shane can no longer see his ribs poking through the flesh.

“What are you staring at,” Ryan says, a little grumpily. He must kneel in the water, sinking in up to his chest. Shane feels warm under the collar of his shirt at the thought of Ryan feeling shy, but thinks he manages to keep his cool.

“You look good,” Shane says, “Healthier, I mean.”

Ryan’s arms have always been nice, probably from all the junk he carries around with him, but now the rest of him has filled out too. Ryan’s quiet for a moment, and then rises up out of the water, unselfconscious again, and smiling as he continues to wash off.

“You’re not doing so badly yourself,” he says, and Shane looks down at his body, touches his chest, and his stomach. He’s not made of as many hard angles anymore, and he smiles too.

.

Once they reach Concord, Shane can almost see the nervous energy radiating off of Ryan. At night, they can see the glow of the city in the distance. It’s less than a day’s travel probably, Shane hasn’t seen a real map in years and only a handful of times in his entire life, but Ryan’s is meticulously hand-drawn and hasn’t steered them wrong yet.

They find an abandoned house to spend the night in. The door’s been boarded up, but the planks come off easy with a hammer from Shane’s backpack. The inside is grimy as expected, probably untouched for more than a hundred years, but there’s a bed and a sofa and it’s comfortable. Shane opens the upstairs windows to let out some of the dust that floats through the air and Ryan shakes out the ancient bed sheet. It’s been a while since Shane’s lay on a real bed with covers and pillows, and the sight alone makes him feel a little wild, desperate. Ryan looks at him, and Shane knows he’s feeling the same way.

“We can share,” Ryan says, “It’s made for two anyway.”

Shane’s not going to argue with that kind of logic.

.

Diamond City is a towering baseball stadium, the sight of which alone makes Shane ache nostalgically for something he’s never known.

Ryan gets them through the gates by spinning a story about how they’re traders, shaking his heavy backpack as proof. The guards don’t ask too many questions, they must look non-threatening enough with their plain clothes and small guns.

Shane doesn’t know what he’s expecting, but Ryan says ‘I could really go for a cold beer,” and it sounds like heaven, so he shoulders his backpack and follows him through the winding streets to a place called the Dugout Inn.

The place is busy as the sun sets, gangs of teens and young adults piled around the outdoor tables, chatting amongst themselves, drinking and laughing. Inside is crowded too, full of residents taking a load off after a long day.

Shane thinks he’s hearing things, the first time he hears his name being called.

The second time makes his stomach twist up in shock and recognition.

He turns on his heel just in time to see Sara pushing her way towards him, and in seconds his arms are full, his face buried in a mane of curls.

“Shane! _Shane_ ,” She yells, face buried in his shoulder. 

“Sara?”

“Fuck, we thought— we thought you were _gone_ ,” she rasps, and when Shane looks over the top of her head he finds himself face to face with his friends, TJ and Adam beaming at him, eyes wide and shiny with shock.

“Shane?” Another, quieter voice says, and he turns to Ryan at his side, Ryan looking between Shane and the others with a quiet understanding on his face. And, if Shane is not mistaken, disappointment. 

“I’m okay,” he says, to Sara, as she pulls back to look up at him in wonder, catching his face in her hands. “I’m— I’m still kicking.”

TJ and Adam clap him on the back, both seeming reluctant to let go. Adam, like Sara, puts his hands on Shane’s face, tells him he looks good, like he’s been eating well, and Shane can’t help look over at Ryan. 

Ryan, the reason Shane has made it here at all, the likely reason he’s still alive.

“I have someone you guys might like to meet,” he says, and watches Ryan’s face light up again. 

It’s not the end of the road just yet.

.

It’s clear that Ryan is scared of Shane leaving, but Shane has no such intention. Something happens when you spend six weeks in the wasteland with a stranger. Something happens when you spend six weeks sharing food and a bedroll and warmth at night, even lying back to back on the cold ground, even sleeping with one eye open.

Shane looks at Ryan, and the thought of leaving him here _hurts_ him, deep in his chest.

“You like him,” Sara says. They’re standing together under a canopy in the city center; on the opposite side of the square, Ryan is sitting in a chair, grimacing as a barber chops away at his overgrown locks.

“I might be dead without him,” Shane replies.

Sara is quiet, leans into Shane’s arm — more for comfort than support.

“We looked for you for so long. We didn’t know what happened.”

“Freak accident,” Shane shrugs, “It could have been any one of you guys.”

They’re quiet for a while, watching Ryan’s struggle from afar. Sara drinks a cola from a glass bottle with a straw, and Shane can’t stop looking at the delicate way the barber tips Ryan’s head to the side to trim his sideburns, elongating his neck, which is both strong and elegant.

He wonders if he could find a way to touch Ryan like that.

“He’s cute,” Sara says, after a while. Shane doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.

.

They can’t stay in the city for long. The Inn is hard on their pockets and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of empty accommodation, nowhere they could all pitch in and call home. Adam puts caps down on a place in the upper tiers, and Sara has a bed in the loft. It’s small, but it’s safe in the walls of the city. They offer their floor to Shane and Ryan until they can figure something out, but Shane can tell it makes Ryan uncomfortable. These are people he’s just getting to know, and making friends is no longer about survival.

They keep staying at the Inn, sharing a room and a bed to keep costs down, and no one makes a thing out of it. Shane’s grown too used to the sound of Ryan breathing next to him, the way he curls in on his side and tucks into Shane’s shoulder, looking for warmth.

The thought comes to Shane one morning, as they’re waking up to the sounds of glasses clinking and radios being tuned as the bar opens for the day.

“We don’t have to stay in the city,” Shane says, and Ryan shifts next to him, barely awake. Shane almost feels bad for springing it on him first thing in the morning.

“We don’t?” Ryan rasps.

“Could find somewhere quiet nearby. Build ourselves a shack. We’re good at scavenging.”

“What about-- what about raiders? Or mutants?”

“We did alright out in the wasteland.”

Ryan is quiet, turns over on the bed to face Shane. He’s squinting, reaches up to tap Shane’s glasses with the tip of his finger.

“I did alright once I met _you_.”

Ryan needs glasses and has for a while. He tries on every pair he comes across in the wastes, looking for something close to what he needs. There’s a reason he fights with his weapons so close to his body, and why he was so bad at hunting until Shane came along. A reason why he was so skinny before.

“You underestimate yourself,” Shane says, and Ryan snorts softly, turning his face away, into Shane’s shoulder. He’s quiet again, until Shane thinks he’s fallen back asleep. It wouldn’t be unlike Ryan to do so.

“Okay,” Ryan says, and startles Shane so much that he jolts, and Ryan snorts softly against his t-shirt. “Let me offload some junk in town, make us some money. We can go looking for a spot to set up.”

“You really want to?” Shane asks, and Ryan pulls back with a sigh.

“I want to stick with you,” he says. “You haven’t had a bad idea yet.”

“Yet,” Shane echoes, and watches as Ryan’s grin blooms.

. 

Finding a spot is easy, finding materials is hard. 

They walk out of the city, over the Charles, keeping low and staying alert. The city has been quieter lately, and if the word in Diamond City is anything to go by it's all thanks to the Minutemen and their new General, but Shane keeps his eyes peeled regardless and Ryan has his back. Quiet doesn’t always mean safe.

There's plenty of space outside the city, but still within walking distance of it. Fairly quickly they happen upon a spot that feels right, nearby a watering hole that Shane's sure he can get his hands on a purifier for eventually. Ryan kicks around in the ruins of half a house and deems it sturdy enough to use as a template. 

They mark the land as theirs — travellers, scavengers, and caravaners will respect it. Raiders and mutants not so much, but daily Minutemen patrols should keep them at bay for a while at least. 

They make a list of what they need. Scrap wood and metal, mostly. They spend the day combing the nearby areas and gathering up what they can. It might take them weeks, but it’s a start. And hard work doesn’t feel so hard when Ryan is next to him, mumbling away under his breath.

Back at the Dugout that night, TJ takes one look at them and asks, “How’d you get so dirty?”

Sara asks, “Where’d you two disappear to today?” and TJ’s eyebrows climb in surprise. Ryan takes a long pull from his beer.

“We’re building a house,” he says. “Together.”

. 

It takes a long time, but they keep going. After a couple of weeks they’ve built enough shelter that they don’t need to keep staying at the Inn or trekking back and forth from the city every day. They light fires to cook their dinner over and stay warm by. They sleep on the dry floor of their shack, side by side, sometimes chest to chest, always uncomfortable, but comfortable together.

Shane would have never expected this kind of life to come so easy to him, being with Ryan has been like wading through mud, through swamp, through water, and he’s finally climbing up onto dry land, finding his footing, feeling the ground beneath him solid for the first time in a long time.

Nothing in the Wasteland is definite, but this feels about as close as it can get.

They build a house.

They lay a fence.

They dig a well.

They plough a field.

Each day, their kingdom grows and stretches over the unclaimed land, and Shane feels something he’s never felt before. He thinks it might be pride.

.

Ryan builds a bunk bed. Shane supposes they were spoiled by the time they spent sleeping at the Inn, and now the ground makes him ache, makes Ryan restless. The bed is tall and sturdy, long enough to accommodate Shane, but narrow enough to fit inside their shack.

“You can sleep on the bottom,” Ryan says, showing him the plans, “I’d hate to see you all hunched over under the roof, big guy.”

It takes maybe a month to gather all the materials, the wood and steel for the bed, the cloth for the bedding. A trader comes by with an incredible amount of soft foam sheeting she had ripped out of the sofa of an abandoned house, and Shane watches in delight as Ryan bargains with her for almost thirty minutes.

“Y’all thinking about setting up a post here?” she asks, and Ryan looks at her blankly. “A trading post, kid.”

“Oh,” Ryan’s eyebrows climb in surprise. “I just— I just like to keep junk around, I don’t know.”

“Well, you’re in a pretty good spot if you ever figure out what you wanna do,” she says, flicking her cigarette to the ground, stubbing it out with her boot. “And you certainly know how to haggle.”

Ryan laughs her off, but even hours later, that night when they eat together around their cobbled-together table, Shane can tell he’s thinking about it.

“Maybe it’s a good idea,” Shane says, and doesn’t have to clarify because Ryan looks up at him, face immediately relaxing, “We do see a lot of people come through here.”

“Trading posts attract raiders too,” Ryan says softly.

“If we’re settling down here, anything we do will attract raiders, Ryan,” Shane replies, and he knows how it sounds. _Settling down. Together._ That’s not what this is, but surely Ryan has to know what it looks like.

“Yeah,” Ryan says, softly, prodding at some over-cooked meat with his plastic fork. “Let’s get ourselves set up first though, right? You and me, before we start thinking about what others need.”

Shane chuckles. “Right,” he says.

.

They gain a bit of a reputation in the area as the guys to ask when you’re looking for something specific. Ryan’s still as much of a hoarder as he was the day Shane met him, if not more so. He’s got containers full of springs and coils and screws, pieces set aside for his own projects and pieces to trade to whoever needs them.

A woman in a blue vault suit and heavy military jacket stops by looking for copper wire. Shane wonders if Ryan knows he’s been bickering with the General of the Commonwealth Minutemen for almost ten minutes straight.

She’s pretty in a rough and tumble kind of way, and she flirts, but it rolls off Ryan like water off a duck’s back. It doesn’t deter the General though; Shane wonders if this is just her nature, the way it’s Ryan’s nature to grin and argue at the same time.

“I’d love to stay and chat all day,” she says, with a rasp in her voice, “But I really do need that wire. Fifty caps for the lot?”

“Fifty is fair,” Ryan concedes, and they make their trade. The General heads back towards the road where there’s a dog waiting for her, beating his tail against the broken asphalt as he keeps watch.

“I can’t believe you were such a hardass to the vault dweller of all people,” Shane snorts, and Ryan shrugs at him, lifting an eyebrow.

“She’s just trying to keep living out here like we are. We gotta fight to survive, but sometimes we can bargain instead.

.

Shane wakes in the night, which isn’t unusual. At first he thinks it’s the usual noise of the wasteland. A radstag sifting through some nearby trash, distant gunfire. His eyes are closed as he listens to the nightbreeze whistling through the shack, wondering what disturbed him — when he hears Ryan shifting in the top bunk with a breathy little sigh.

Shane listens, as he wonders if Ryan is still awake or just rolling over in his sleep. He keeps his breathing steady as the sounds come more into focus, clearer when he’s not thinking about the wind or the world outside of their home. Ryan’s blanket rustles, soft and so very slight, as though he’s barely moving — maybe swishing his leg over the mattress, soothing himself, or—

Ryan sighs again, this time a little heavier, almost a whine, and Shane freezes. He can hear it now, the sound of skin on skin, steady and rhythmic and a little wet, Ryan’s quiet, bitten-off noises. Shane feels his belly go tight, and _ache_.

It’s been so long since he’s touched himself, since he’s felt safe enough to do it, comfortable enough. Clearly, Ryan feels okay about it here and now.

He wonders how often Ryan does this; waits until Shane’s asleep in the dead of night before he indulges in his tall, narrow bunk. If maybe he’s done this while they shared a bed.

Ryan gasps and the stroking sound gets faster, harsher, and Shane stares at the slats above his head, trying to picture Ryan through them. He’s getting hard now too. It’s not a surprise, he wakes up most mornings with at least the makings of an erection, but it’s easily ignorable when you don’t have time to relax. Apparently, Ryan makes time. Ryan takes care of himself in a way Shane can’t bring himself to.

It goes on for less than a handful of minutes, but feels like forever when Shane is holding his breath. He hears Ryan’s noises get a little bit frantic, as suppressed as they are, and a low moan as everything else stops. Shane lies there, hard under his blanket, listening to Ryan panting quietly.

After a few moments, there’s a creak, and Ryan swings his legs over the bunk, hopping down, and Shane feigns waking, lifting his head from the pillow. It’s so dark he can barely see Ryan’s outline less than two feet away, can just about make out the shape of his shoulders and waist, the pale material of his undergarments.

“Ry’?” He asks, voice scratchy. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Ryan answers back, just as hoarse as he makes his way to the door, unlatching it. “Just need some air.”

There’s a splashing noise from outside, Ryan cleaning up out by the rain barrels. Probably racking up a shit-ton of rads while he’s at it, idiot.

It’s cold enough that Ryan doesn’t spend too long outside, strolls back in and pauses at the end of the bed as he catches Shane’s eye. Shane thinks, _now, do it, just put your hand out. He’d take it. He’d crawl into bed with you, you know he would._

He doesn’t move.

Ryan reaches out, squeezes Shane’s calf over the blanket.

“Go back to sleep,” he says, gently, before hauling himself up into the top bunk. Shane closes his eyes, remembers the night in the house back in Concord. Ryan’s body next to his on the bed, not touching but just so present, warm, weighty beside him. The nights at the Inn, curled up together on a too-small mattress. A hand on the small of his back in the early morning. 

Above him, Ryan’s breathing evens out into a soft, low snore. Shane doesn’t sleep right away.

.

The thing about raiders is that they’re not a very quiet kind of bunch, which turns out to be Shane and Ryan’s saving grace.

They wake to the noise of fences rattling as they’re jumped, excited yipping and cackling from outside the walls of the shack. Ryan drops down from his bunk, eyes wide as they meet Shane’s, and they both scramble for whatever armor they can lay their hands on, and their weapons with the few seconds to spare that they have.

Shane cocks his shotgun and kicks the door open with his boot, firing a warning shot. Ryan is right behind him.

The night is stunned and silent for a moment, the shot echoing in the air. A few ravens depart a nearby skeletal tree, squawking indignantly. Shane hears a laugh in the dark, and all hell breaks loose.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. 

In the space of five minutes (though it feels more like five hours) the night is silent again. Raiders retreat into the hills, tails between their legs. Some of them lie dead on the ground, a mess that Shane does not look forward to tackling.

And then Ryan. Ryan is on the ground too, but he’s breathing hard as he sits up to catch Shane’s eye.

“You okay?” Shane calls, and Ryan groans quietly.

“I got hit,” he says. “It’s a clean shot.”

“Fuck,” Shane says, and drops to his knees next to where Ryan had fallen. He’s clutching his shin, which is bleeding profusely through his fingers. Shane knows what to do next, but he feels frozen to the spot, watching dark droplets flood over Ryan’s knuckles.

“It fuckin’ hurts,” Ryan croaks, almost laughing, but Shane can see the strain on his face, the tightness around his eyes when he looks up.

“Okay,” Shane breathes. “Okay. Let’s get you inside and see what we can do.”

.

“I heard there was trouble around here,” Carla says cautiously, the next time she stops by with her pack brahmin full of junk. She pointedly looks for Ryan, eyebrow raised, cigarette held loosely between her index and middle fingers. Shane sighs quietly, shrugging a shoulder.

“I don’t think Ryan’s really in the mood for a haggle,” he says, which isn’t a very good deflect. He’s probably drawing more attention to the problem.

“He doing okay?” Carla asks, and for a moment she looks like she might actually be concerned for Ryan, but then says. “Don’t want to lose my best customer, even if he is a goddamn miser.”

Might as well be honest. 

“He got shot,” Shane says, a little curtly. “And he’s had a fever since last night, so it hasn’t been great. I haven’t slept much.”

And then Carla starts to look _actually_ concerned. She drops her cigarette and stubs it out under the toe of her boot, dusting her hand off the sleeve of her jacket.

“I’m heading towards Sanctuary,” she says, slaps her brahmin on the rump to get her moving. “I’ll send the General your way.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Shane winces. 

“I know I don’t,” Carla says, as she leaves, and Shane watches her disappear over the hill. Sanctuary is a good day of travel away; they’d passed through on their way to Diamond City, just before Concord. Obviously he wants to help Ryan, but a lot can happen in a day.

Inside the shack, Ryan is dozing on the bottom bunk, covers pushed aside and a faint sheen of sweat over his brow. Shane reaches down to touch his cheek, check his temperature, but Ryan doesn’t stir, huffing softly in his sleep.

The General arrives early in the morning, sooner than Shane had expected (though he really hadn’t expected her at all), and drops off a bag of supplies. Shane looks away as she spills a plethora of chems onto the countertop, and frowns.

“We can’t afford all those.”

The General looks at him like he has three heads.

“On the house, Shane,” she says, and Shane feels a pang in his chest. He doesn’t know her name. Ryan is awake that morning, and he has to look away when they administer a stimpak and dress his wounds, but he’s looking brighter almost immediately. He even manages to eat a bowl of cereal, propped up on some pillows.

After lunch, which the General also so generously provides, Shane walks her to the crossroads. She’s heading towards Diamond City, so he gives her a letter to leave at the Dugout for TJ.

“You didn’t have to come all this way for us,” Shane says, because he’s said _thank you_ like six times now.

“I was in the area,” The General lies, and smiles at him, head tilted. “When you have love in times like these, you need to protect it. You want to do it all by yourself just to prove you can, but it’s okay to ask others for help.”

Shane feels his stomach bottom out.

The General says goodbye and shoulders her backpack, breaking into a little jog as she heads in the direction of the city, and Shane watches until she’s just a small dot on the horizon. The sun is setting when he arrives back at the homestead, and Ryan is sitting up in bed, fiddling with a screwdriver and a funny little circuit board that the General had dropped off for him.

“This is for a hotplate,” Ryan explains, glancing up as Shane closes the door behind him, toeing off his boots. “I’ll finally get one working.”

“The General thinks we’re in love,” Shane blurts. It’s not exactly what he’d meant to say. Ryan barely flinches, barely looks up.

“Funny,” he says, softly, and Shane wonders if he’s still feverish.

.

It’s not really funny though. It’s a little bit true.

.

Ryan’s a slow healer, even with the help of the stimpaks, Shane thinks it might be the cold weather, Ryan’s still limbs and sluggish blood. He looks tired most days and doesn’t always eat as much as Shane’s used to him eating.

It gets later into the fall, the grass whithers, the crops die off for the winter, and they start digging into the stockpile that should keep them going until spring.

Shane learns to sleep sitting upright in the armchair, because he hates the top bunk, hates when he can’t just turn his head and see Ryan sleeping, breathing slow and deep.

Ryan’s getting better, yeah, but it had been scary for a while. He limps heavily when he walks, rests often, but when Shane thinks about the alternative, and how badly their encounter _could_ have gone, this is clearly one of the best-case scenarios.

Ideally, Ryan wouldn’t have gotten shot at all, but beggars can’t be choosers.

In early November, both of them toss and turn in the chill of the night air, until eventually Ryan huffs and throws back his blanket, a wordless invite. Shane, the hairs on his arms standing on end, doesn’t need to be told twice.

Winter gets colder, they keep sharing a bed.

.

Diamond City isn’t exactly what anyone would call beautiful. Serviceable, at best, and a place of comfort.

In the December lights, it feels like a wonderland, and Shane sees it through brand new eyes with Ryan at his side, leaning heavily into his support crutch.

“Doing okay?” Shane asks him, and Ryan rolls his eyes fondly at the concern. They’d caught a ride on Carla’s brahmin most of the way to the city (she was surly as usual, but seemed pleased to see Ryan up and about), and then walked the last half-mile or so to the big green gates. Shane still feels a little breathless whenever he stands before them, remembering how he and Ryan travelled for weeks just to get here, remembering how far he’d travelled before that.

Ryan nods as they reach the inside of the stadium, eyes wide and reflecting back every glistening light with as much enthusiasm.

“Let’s get to the Dugout,” he says. They weave through the city, taking their time and drinking in the sights, the atmosphere buzzing around them.

“I haven’t celebrated Christmas in years,” Ryan admits, looking suddenly remorseful. “Mom would be so disappointed.”

It’s not often that Ryan mentions his family. Every time is like a punch to the gut.

“We’re celebrating right now,” Shane says, pretty sure that he knows how the whole Christmas thing goes. It’s been a while for him too. Ryan looks at him, eyes soft, appreciative, and Shane doesn’t know what to do with that so he just looks at his feet as they trudge towards the Inn. 

It’s a rare present exchange amongst a group of friends. They drink too much, pass trinkets to one another, badly crafted jewelry and keychains. The pièce de résistance is the music box that Ryan had spent a good week tinkering over for Sara. The spinning ballerina was long broken and decayed, instead replaced with a small whittled bird, courtesy of Shane. Sara’s face when she opens it and hears the soft tinkling of music is worth the effort, of course.

After a few more beers, Ryan starts showing off his ‘battle wound’, barely healed as it is, and takes delight in making feigned pained noises as their friends try to poke at him.

Eventually the Bobrov brothers begin closing the bar for the night and shooing their patrons out the door, loud and blunt as ever. Shane slides a string of caps across the counter to secure a room at the Inn, both he and Ryan too drunk to even consider walking back home tonight. Not this late, not in this weather, not when their old room is still available.

Sharing a bed is old hat for them, and Shane wonders why they ever stopped sharing in the first place.

“Because it started as a necessity,” Ryan says, surprisingly eloquent for how clearly drunk he is, how glassy his eyes are when he looks up at Shane, curled in towards his chest, all round shoulders and biceps. He’s really something to hold on to, in more ways than one. “And now it’s just the way we are.”

It feels like he’s talking about more than just bed-sharing, but Shane doesn’t probe any deeper. This feeling is fragile, and delicate, and there are few things like so in the world nowadays.

“I like the way we are,” Shane says, but Ryan’s already asleep.

.

It’s the last day of the year 2289.

The shack is small and warm, and there’s just one bed.

Friends pass by and ask “Why don’t you move on from here?” because heaven knows they have the means to get more comfortable. They could pick up and take their shop to the city, and this time they wouldn’t need to lie about trading to get in.

Nothing’s stopping them, except that they’re happy the way things are.

It’s cold, but spring is just around the corner. There’s a fire going in the old stove of the broken house they built their shack around. Billie Holiday is playing softly on their radio, tuned to Diamond City Radio. Their nights together are the warmest nights Shane has had in his entire life.

“We have what we need,” Ryan shrugs, and hip-checks Shane as he slides past him to rummage around in their cooler, mumbling to himself about dinner.

Some things happen when you build a life in the wasteland, with someone who’s never felt like a stranger.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy New Year :)


End file.
